Staring Down the Ghost
by SnapeJuice
Summary: Sequel to "In the Nighttime." Heavy with an unwanted pregnancy (the result of sexual blackmail by Draco), Ginny contemplates a world in which he still has control over her, even after she has left Hogwarts. POVs will switch off between D/G. NOT ROMANCE.
1. I Will Let Myself Disappear

Any characters, places or objects that you recognize are property of J.K. Rowling and her corporate supporters, Scholastic, Bloomsbury and any other publishers the world over. Any original characters, places or objects belong to the author. This disclaimer is implied for this and any subsequent chapters.

For all of you that wanted a sequel to "In the Nighttime," here it is. If you haven't read that, please do. This can be read as a standalone, although there are many references made to details in "Nighttime." The basic premise, though: Ginny swapped sexual favors with Malfoy in exchange for his secrecy regarding an age-old Weasley family secret. As part of this agreement, any pregnancy that may result must be carried to term. 

The title of this sequel comes from the Third Eye Blind song, "Deep Inside of You."

*~*~*~*~*~

There is something in me of which I cannot be rid. 

It is with me constantly, eating at me, growing; a reminder of that which is in my past, that which I hoped would stay there. As it continues to grow larger and larger, it doubles in size and cultivates and expands. I am stuck here, a slave to its whim, as I was a slave to something else, once upon a time. 

What I wouldn't give to expel it from my body. To dislodge it from my body and my memory. It symbolizes everything that I do not want. I don't want _you_ and I certainly don't want this.

There are times when I feel I will go crazy, contemplating what is going on within my body, as this _thing _grows and festers and claims integral parts of _me _for itself, as the old explorers claimed others' land for their own home country. There are no flags involved, no native rebellion, though; I unwillingly give myself up to it. I have fought too long to remain in this battle, my body is too weary. I will let myself disappear a little at a time for I know in the end – at the _end _of this ordeal – I will be whole once again.

My body is no longer mine. I thought I had left that behind when I left Hogwarts, but I was fooling myself. I will forever be underneath you until the end of time as a result of _this._ That which I do not want but you have given me despite (or _to _spite, I'm not sure). It's not that you want it either, though; you only want the effects of _this _on me. You swore you'd tell the world my family's secret if I _ever _terminated it. And I want it only so you will keep your mouth shut and my father will keep his job at the Ministry. And my mother – oh, my sainted mother – so my mother will keep her dignity. 

I can't stand the fact that you wield such power over me. It's like being pulled in two different directions – I have you determining who I am – what I _do -_ from a thousand miles away and then I have this thing within me that determines who I am: who, when I am not seen as that tragic 16-year-old Weasley, is seen as that whore girl Weasley who got herself knocked up.

It's a parasite, this thing in me that shares half your genes and half mine. It grows by the day, it multiplies. The cells will double and triple and quadruple as time passes, as I gain weight and slowly lose my body, my autonomy to these cells that I don't want, never wanted. A _piece _of you inside of me.

The day I found that your seed had taken hold in me I seriously contemplated throwing myself off the moving staircase at Hogwarts. While I may have had broken limbs, at least this growth in my uterus would _not _have been. I felt dirty, I felt violated, and I felt _used. _Your bastard – this thing inside of me – is using my body as an incubator.

I had hoped that perhaps I would learn to forget that you had implanted this in me. That I could look at it as though some kind of miracle embedded in me. After all, there is nothing more natural, more gratifying than childbirth, my mum told me. I couldn't delude myself into this. I have tried. I have tried _so _long to look at this as some sort of gift. A fresh, beautiful life that could somehow give purpose to _my_ life, as if this beautiful new person would somehow make the hell you put me through worth it. 

I am apathetic when it comes to it. It will grow, it will be born, it will be alive. 

It will be. 

Perhaps the only way for me to break away from it is to end it all.

All I want is for them to take this thing out me:

This thing that is my child. 

"All I want is for them to take this thing out of me," is a quote adapted from _La Niňa Rosa _told to the _Miami Herald_ in an article from March 4th, 2003 entitled "Child's Abortion After Rape Splits Nicaragua" by Nancy San Martin.


	2. My Most Innocent of Expressions

****

A/N: Dedicated to Isa, who enjoys this story far too much.

I don't often watch people. Quite the opposite, really. Generally, people watch me. 

I am the heir to one of the most powerful wizarding families in all of Britain. The wizarding press has called me "akin to Adonis." My father is a high official in the Ministry of Magic, my mother one of the most well known socialites in all of Britain. 

And so I stand here, watching you, your red hair horribly unkempt, as if you had your own personal tornado sitting on top of your head. Your belly is large with the child, and a shiver runs down my spine. You can barely walk through Diagon Alley without people staring at you. It wouldn't be so bad for you, Weasley, if you _looked _older than you were, but the gods cursed you with one of those eternally young faces. You _look _16, you hold the _body _of a 16-year-old - you shouldn't _be _with child, Weasley - and so the milquetoast wizarding public regard you as that which you are - a child about to have a child herself.

Your eyes don't leave your shoes, those Mary Jane-like things you wear day in and day out because your pathetic excuse for a father can't gather enough sickles to buy you another shoddy pair. I remember you used to take them off quite carefully before you'd lie down on your bed - before I'd join you on your bed. It would commence, and I would find gratification _somewhere_ but you'd just lie there, staring into space, trying desperately to forget yourself as you lay under me. You'd stare over my shoulder, towards those ugly brown _shoes _in the back corner, and sometimes I'd wonder whether you were thinking of those things. Were those things more appealing than me? Was it easier to think of some old, worn pair of secondhand footwear than to contemplate what role you play in my life? Did you feel shame as you lay under me, as I moved into you, was part of you for a moment, then withdrew? Or did you just not think about it all? 

You're bitter, it's difficult to see it on your face right now as you walk, I can't quite see your facial expressions are you stare towards the paved brick flooring, but you're bitter. Your large brothers encircle you, warding off any witch who stares too long or makes a move towards a friend to point out the sight that _is _you. The large-footed ogre of a brother of yours - the one in my year - his eyes dart back and forth, looking as if he will Avada anyone who even looks within twenty meters of you in any direction.

Do you ever have the urge to kill me? Do you ever find yourself in that brief period of time between sleep and awake, when your brain is aware of those things that go on around you but somehow they transform into exaggerations of the reality within the confines of your brain? I can picture yourself, lying there in some dusty, small, closet-sized bedroom, lying on your back as you have done many times before, just seething with anger, just seething with a rage that I will never experience. 

Do you ever sit down at the breakfast table with your carrot-haired siblings, see your mother buttering the toast with a knife and think, "That would make a perfect weapon to kill Malfoy." For some reason, this brings me some sort of satisfaction. The beautiful innocence of the only Weasley daughter has been corrupted. Hail! For she has had a murderous thoughts. I've done more than violate your body, I've violated your mind. It has become the same sort of wasteland that your body has become.

This wasteland, of course, that holds my child. Wait, not my child - your bastard. No one knows that I am the father, it's apart of our arrangement. I never reveal the secret of your mother's illegitimate pre-Weasley offspring, and you allow me to seek the best revenge I could ever think of - shaming you.

My father surprised me the other day. He's much more observant than I ever would have guessed. "Have you heard about the youngest Weasley?" he asked, bearing a smirk that looked as though it could be transposed on my younger, firmer lips.

I assumed my most innocent of expressions: "Weasley?"

"She's going to bear a bastard," he explained, his face alight with joy. He was still rather annoyed at the time when he got into that public scuffle with your father. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

He knew the answer to the question before he'd even asked it. There was no need to acknowledge it, but looking at his face, I knew he was proud. I knew that he was thinking of the way he had ruined your mother. He knew my profound sense of glory and power and _authority_ over another human being, and he smiled, nodded - and continued on with his day.

It's simple, the scene I am watching. A girl walks surrounded by her protective brothers. Except the girl is full of self-loathing. And the brothers, more than protecting the girl, hint that they are somewhat ashamed - with the way that they refuse to make eye contact with any of the passers-by. There are no protective arms around your shoulders or whispered words of reassurance, saying quietly, "No one's watching, stop being so damn self-conscious" - because they _are _watching, the lot of old witches that walk up and down Diagon Alley. They whisper amongst themselves, and point. 

You look at the floor, perhaps surveying the shoes of the people around you, somehow seeing past the large belly I gave to you. And for some reason, you look up right when you pass me. No doubt because you saw my well-buffed brown loafers in the shadows of this building. You stare at me for a moment, our eyes make contact as our bodies had night after night after night: it's a stare of horror, disgrace, but I see it. It was for but a moment - you look down to the floor again immediately - but don't think I didn't see it, Weasley. 

That murderous glint. Had I been within reaching distance, you would have killed me.

I have ruined you.

I have corrupted you.

Don't think you'll ever escape me. It's not possible. 

Hatred never dies, my sweet Ginny, it only sleeps. 


	3. The Product of That Violation

****

A/N Two more installments and this story will be _over. _O-V-E-R! 

Any confusion over pronouns in reference to the child is purely intentional. I want to show how utterly confused and mixed-up she is, post-birth.

It was thirty-six of hours of agonizing labor. The irony was not lost on me that it took a day and a half to deliver what it probably took us two and a half minutes to conceive. You were never one for prolonged sessions, Malfoy, just multiple encounters, waking me up when I had left myself, bringing me back to consciousness.

Maximize humiliation, minimize effort. Isn't that the Malfoy family motto? 

The MediWitch who delivered it said that she had never seen such a large child delivered from such a small person. I was bleeding _profusely, _she repeated over and over as my mother held my hand. The child must have done some _some _damage as I strained to bring him outside of my body, to isolate him from myself - as I strained to be a separate entity once more. 

Leave it your offspring to be more trouble than its worth, Malfoy. 

All I wanted to do was sleep once I had expelled it from me body, Gods, all I wanted was a moment of peace. I just wanted to close my eyes, and let it be dark for a moment - and silent for _just _a moment - but all I heard was the squalor that you produced. I just wanted a moment of thoughtless repose - not have your ferret-face housed in my dreams or that _thing _haunting me from somewhere in my womb. It was another person now, an individual, I gave it _life _for God's sake, you'd think that would suffice - but it cried, it _cried _for so long.

The MediWitch said that it was hungry, that even after my ordeal, I needed to feed it. She was quite horrified when I said I didn't want it anywhere near me. She spoke to my mother in a corner and called it "the earliest instance of post-partum depression she'd ever seen." 

I was not going to let it latch onto to my breast and allow my body to nourish something I never wanted in the first place. That thing is _your _progeny. 

Somewhere in the beginning of this pregnancy, I tried so desperately to love it. I wanted to be a good mother, despite the fact that I was a teenager. I could also be a good, caring mother. 

After all, I reasoned, children were born of rape all the time, and somehow those victims allowed themselves to care for the product of that violation.

I am not most victims, though, Malfoy, but I am a victim, as is this child that never asked to born or be conceived - but this does not make me empathize with it. It does not allow me to feel sympathy or even minutely _maternal _towards this thing that happened to live in my body for nine months. 

It is apart of you, the ultimate pawn in your game of sadistic revenge to ruin my life. You upped the ante in this pathetic competition you have with your father. Your father quite capably knocked up my mother, and so you will do the same because a son will always do as well - if not better - than his father. 

It took me three hours, but I did eventually ask to see the child. 

I didn't want to see it as much as I wanted to stare at this thing that had caused me so much grief for the last nine months. Was it the monster I imagined it to be?

My mother brought it to me and asked me if I wanted to hold it. 

I politely declined and asked her to hold it up three yards away from the bed. 

And it did, oh, _Gods, _it looked like you. It had your blonde hair and the thinnest nose I had ever seen. The most sullen cheeks and palest reflection. I was convinced my mother would know it was your child in that moment when I wailed and started sobbing as it was doing in her arms. I pictured you in that moment, grunting, moving over me as I lay there helpless, imagining that moment when you released into me, creating _that… _

I couldn't take it, I broke in that moment, and started yelling so loudly that the child could not be heard over me. It was _here, _it was in my house, it was you all over again. It looked like you, and I never wanted him, and he had blonde hair, and I could imagine him smirking, and he came from my body, its fists were flying in the air - those tiny fists, and I didn't want it near me or around me - I just needed him out of the room.

The child was you. The child _is _you. You no longer visit me nightly, but I have_ that _living two rooms away. It's hard to describe. Beyond the fact that I have it in the Burrow, I also have the images, the memories of you, and it's conception living in my thoughts and dreams and memories. 

I haven't held it or gone near it in three weeks.

You aren't here, Malfoy, but for all intents and purposes, you are here. I don't _need _you here physically. You've already infiltrated me enough to create _you _when you're not here.

Job well done.

Like you, I view it as the Plague.

Except the Plague was eventually eradicated. 

Your family line has been propagated, your lifeline will continue indefinitely through this child.

Through this child, you will never be extirpated. Even if no one else knows that it belongs to you, _I _will know that I bore your heir, your spawn.

A living reminder of what you did to me. 

An innocent product of your obsession with my ruination: 

A reminder of what I used to be - before I met you.


	4. Swimming in Euphoria

__

"She's incapacitated. We will not have him causing her trouble; his presence is detrimental to her health. Take him."

******

And the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so my mother says as she holds him, purring at him, clutching at him as if he were her lifeline – this wispy strawberry-haired child wiggling in her arms.

He's been squalling a bit, and I await the moment his short gasps will turn into that piercing wail I have come to associate with the nights. Small and ugly, his limbs move as if he has no control over them, frog-like, more amphibian than human. 

There is nothing endearing about him, I have decided. We have had him for a month and there is not one thing attractive about him. He drools consistently and, despite being of my flesh, a very unattractive character. His head falls for he has no control; it must be constantly supported. 

My mother looks at him with a joyous look in her eyes, almost as if this product of your misery we have living under our roof is wonderful.

As if he were a gift of some sort for her to mold, a small miracle as she enters her middle age, regretful of accomplishing her goal – the heir- her first attempt.

He resembles me. The same thin nose, almost lipless mouth, the same virulent expression, but I see you in him also – the overly large cheeks that have since fattened up, the dark eyes. It was obvious when I opened the door to the Manor and saw your bedraggled brother – the tall one, the Dragon Wrestler or whatever uncouth profession he associates himself with - clutching him, pushing him into my hands as if my child were a sack of potatoes. 

It was instant recognition, staring down at him. Did that scare you when they first laid him in your hands? Did you touch him? Did he haunt you in your dreams or did you pretend he didn't exist? Was it easier to pretend Potter had fathered him or did looking into his eyes bring back memories of those nights I spent with you against your will?

Your brother said you were incapacitated. Is that the story they are spreading about the wizarding community? I heard differently, my sweet Ginny, I heard you never fed him, you never touched him, that your parents rushed you to St. Mungo's not three weeks after the delivery for fear of you doing something radical to either yourself or the child. You cried non-stop, the Healer had told my father, you muttered the nonsensical, remained in your birthing bed for one whole week after having the child, howled for no reason whenever your mother brought him around you to be fed. You did nothing productive with the child except for naming him: Creighton, your mother said. It reminded of you of a disease that disables people, which he, in fact, did to you.

All of Diagon Alley knew you were in the hospital, that you'd borne the bastard, that you wouldn't tell anybody the identity of the father. Some suspected that he had been the product of a sexual violation of sorts – this, of course, would account for the unhealthy way to which you had responded to the child – but others, _others_ who knew what traitors your pathetic family was to the pureblooded, believe that you were nothing but a sullied woman. That the child was the product of some sort of lower-class liaison not befitting your age or social status. 

Oh, how the truth juxtaposes the rumor – how the actual father of your child was someone most witch debutantes would have loved to have a liaison with. 

And, this, of course, would be true, that you had been violated, except that your father had ended the story differently. His story didn't end with your offspring being raised by the reluctant father, breaking a vow in the process. It didn't end with me holding this… outcome in my hands on my front stoop. No, your father's version of the story ended with the child dying tragically by some mysterious malady. The story ended simply enough, with a young girl's unwanted offspring finding perhaps an appropriate fate.

Except you broke your part of our bargain. You may be incapacitated, but this did not prevent you from revealing my name to your father, did it?

This did not prevent you from sending your large brother to turn the supposedly deceased child over to my guardianship, did it? This did not prevent you from giving my mother a purpose or my father another thorn in his side?

Let me tell you that my father is none too pleased about having him at the Manor – but then he never thought your mother would have performed the Paternus Charm on her first child, and that his seed had impregnated her. My father threatened to tell the wizarding world about Crouch if your mother and father did not take Creighton back into the folds of your pathetic clan, but your mother is nothing, if not determined.

I saw the triumphant glint in her eyes as she regaled us with the proof she had kept for so many decades – that the child who would grow up to be Bartemius Crouch, Jr. was our mutual sibling. She had her child's proof of paternity, and laughed as my father attempted to find common ground. Yes, my father could reveal that your mother had given birth to a child prior to her marriage, that she had in fact given birth to a Death Eater of all things, but she would not hesitate to reveal that the much-revered Lucius Malfoy had seduced an innocent woman bewitched by the Dark Arts, fathered said child, then spirited the baby away before she could do anything.

My father had severely underestimated your mother. And as a result, I am sharing a domicile with a child in whose life I never expected to play a role. This child whose very presence drove you into fits of misery. Creighton will grow up steadfast in the fact he is my son. Truth be told, the child has been living in doors for the past month, there has been no need to explain his presence at the Manor - but he is mine. No one will know that he is the deceased Weasley grandchild. 

I will spare him _that_ indignity, thank you.

I am the victor, my unconscious belladonna. You can do whatever it takes, keep yourself in the psychiatric ward swimming in euphoria - the product of all those potions and elixirs you consume - for all eternity, and you will never escape the fact that I had my way with you. That I took your innocence and gave you a child. You will never forget the late night torment and the anxiety and the shame. You are a shadow of your former self, and whether I lay eyes on you ever again, it will not make one bit of difference. I drove you to it. Creighton exists, and so does your never ending shame.

My mother has this doll sitting on the mantle, she often stares at it: it has a blue Victorian dress with a large skirt and bright red hair. I used to take so much pleasure in attempting to knock it over only because I knew my mother cherished it. It reminded her of better times, before she was a wife and mother, full of lament, when she used to play dolls with Andromeda and Bellatrix, back in a time when the sun never set and smiles lived on her full, red lips. Rushing over to a bawling Creighton, she knocked it off the side table where it had sat from decades, breaking it instantly. It had entertained her for eons, and in a matter of moments, it was irreparable, no spell could fix it. 

Destroyed.

Broken.

Just as I have broken the girl. 

Author's Note: As usual, dedicated to Isa. The child's name, Creighton ("Cray-ton"), is a Gaelic boy's name, meaning "near the creek." Ginny's reasoning is in truth my reason for choosing it, as it resembles cretin, which, out of Merriam-Webster's dictionary, literally means one afflicted with cretinism, a condition "characterized by physical stunting and mental retardation." I was surprised to also find out that one of the meanings of cretin in English literature is "a wretch, an innocent victim," which is the role that Creighton does indeed play.

Draco's description of Creighton ("unattractive," "his frog-like actions") actually come from Queen Victoria of England's diaries in which she addressed her distaste for her own infants. 


End file.
